Consumers of financial products and services are faced with a maze of proprietary financial products. Individuals providing investment advice to "small" investors typically have little training in investment analysis. The field of investment analysis is further complicated by numerous methodologies of determining investment strategies. Several of these methodologies include fundamental analysis which is used to evaluate investments on the basis of criteria such as, but not limited to industry group, financial strength, earnings growth rate, sales, quality of management, technical analysis, modern portfolio theory, non-linear mathematical modeling, etc.
Technical analysis seeks to exploit for profit the trends of price movement. Modern portfolio theory correlates risk and return from a portfolio of securities to develop "efficient" portfolio systems. Non-linear mathematical modeling incorporates neural network optimization methodologies to extract optimal performance from both fundamental and technical data.
Rapidly changing markets demand rapid response and responsible decision making which results from rigorous analysis. Human financial advisors simply do not have the time or expertise to devote to the "small" investor. One alternative available to investors is to purchase mutual funds, however, the "pooled funds" approach used by mutual funds does not provide individualized investment management or consider the customer's whole portfolio. Accordingly, the pooled funds approach fails to provide maximum individual returns with minimum risk.